The Muse – Jessie Burton

From the #1 internationally bestselling author of The Miniaturist comes a captivating and brilliantly realized story of two young women a Caribbean immigrant in 1960s London, and a bohemian woman in 1930s Spain and the powerful mystery that ties them together.

England, 1967. Odelle Bastien is a Caribbean emigre trying to make her way in London. When she starts working at the prestigious Skelton Institute of Art, she discovers a painting rumored to be the work of Isaac Robles, a young artist of immense talent and vision whose mysterious death has confounded the art world for decades. The excitement over the painting is matched by the intrigue around the conflicting stories of its discovery. Drawn into a complex web of secrets and deceptions, Odelle does not know what to believe or who she can trust, including her mesmerizing colleague, Marjorie Quick.

Spain, 1936. Olive Schloss, the daughter of a Viennese Jewish art dealer and an English heiress, follows her parents to Arazuelo, a poor, restless village on the southern coast. She grows close to Teresa, a young housekeeper, and Teresa s half-brother, Isaac Robles, an idealistic and ambitious painter newly returned from the Barcelona salons. A dilettante buoyed by the revolutionary fervor that will soon erupt into civil war, Isaac dreams of being a painter as famous as his countryman Picasso.

Raised in poverty, these illegitimate children of the local landowner revel in exploiting the wealthy Anglo-Austrians. Insinuating themselves into the Schloss family s lives, Teresa and Isaac help Olive conceal her artistic talents with devastating consequences that will echo into the decades to come.


Rendered in exquisite detail, The Muse is a passionate and enthralling tale of desire, ambition, and the ways in which the tides of history inevitably shape and define our lives.

A Spool of Blue Thread – Anne Tyler

“It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon. . .” This is how Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The Whitshanks are one of those families that radiate togetherness: an indefinable, enviable kind of specialness. But they are also like all families, in that the stories they tell themselves reveal only part of the picture. Abby and Red and their four grown children have accumulated not only tender moments, laughter, and celebrations, but also jealousies, disappointments, and carefully guarded secrets. From Red’s father and mother, newly arrived in Baltimore in the 1920s, to Abby and Red’s grandchildren carrying the family legacy boisterously into the twenty-first century, here are four generations of Whitshanks, their lives unfolding in and around the sprawling, lovingly worn Baltimore house that has always been their anchor.

Brimming with all the insight, humor, and generosity of spirit that are the hallmarks of Anne Tyler’s work,A Spool of Blue Thread tells a poignant yet unsentimental story in praise of family in all its emotional complexity. It is a novel to cherish.

Artists of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro

In the face of the misery in his homeland, the artist Masuji Ono was unwilling to devote his art solely to the celebration of physical beauty. Instead, he put his work in the service of the imperialist movement that led Japan into World War II.

Now, as the mature Ono struggles through the aftermath of that war, his memories of his youth and of the “floating world”—the nocturnal world of pleasure, entertainment, and drink—offer him both escape and redemption, even as they punish him for betraying his early promise. Indicted by society for its defeat and reviled for his past aesthetics, he relives the passage through his personal history that makes him both a hero and a coward but, above all, a human being.

Hunger Eats a Man – Nkosinathi Sithole

When Father Gumede, known as Priest, loses his job as a farmhand, he realises he can’t afford to love his neighbour as he does himself. Despondent and enraged, Priest cuts off all ties to the church and politics, determined to make a living – at whatever cost. It will take a strange story written by his son Sandile – a comical, terrifying and prophetic tale in which the downtrodden rise up to march on the wealth of a neighbouring suburb – to show Priest the hope and humanity inherent in the human spirit. Beautifully poetic, funny and highly relevant, Nkosinathi Sithole’s debut novel highlights the ongoing plight of many rural South Africans and the power of a community working together to bring about change.

Koors - Deon Meyer

Rapport sê: Die verhaal bly jou onthuts, verras en oorrompel. Die manier waarop die skrywer nooit die draad verloor nie, nooit die spanning laat verslap nie en oënskynlik moeiteloos landskappe, situasies en karakters optower. Dit alles terwyl die verhaal onstuitbaar voortstu. Die einde het niemand sien kom nie. Ek het absoluut geen kritiek te lewer nie, ek probeer nog om my bewondering te verteer.

Dis ’n inisiasie- en vormingsroman oor die dood van onskuld. Dis ’n verhaal oor die liefde in sy vele fasette en gedaantes. Die taal is soepel en gedienstig. Daar is niks oorbodig nie. Dis vaartbelyn, innoverend en briljant ontwerp. Die leser is ná die laaste bladsy nie meer dieselfde mens nie, soos dit hoort. Dis relevant en lewer ongesiens maatskaplike kommentaar. Dit preek nooit nie, gorrel nooit nie.

Koors pak jou beet en laat jou nie los voordat jy dit uitgesweet het en bewerig bly lê nie. Bravo!

Dark Continent My Black Arse - Sihle Khumalo (Grietje)